Louis Clinton, Jr.

The name Lou Clinton was synonymous with general aviation in the state of Colorado during the middle of the 20th century.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee on February 26, 1917, Clinton and his family soon moved to Colorado; where, after graduating high school and college, Clinton made his first solo flight in October 1940. Thus began his life-long love affair with aviation. Clinton went on to become a certified flight instructor and, in 1944, co-founded Clinton & Held Aviation Co., which became Clinton Aviation Company a year later.

Clinton Aviation Company was a fixed-base operator at Stapleton Airport, providing fueling, maintenance, tie-down, training and other services for private pilots. It later became the first dealer for Cessna aircraft and, by 1950, had the highest sales of any Cessna dealership in the world. During that time, Clinton also founded and operated Denver Airplane Supply, a parts distributor.

A pilot with more than 6,000 hours of flight time, Clinton was a leading innovator in the promotion of general aviation and the marketing of small airplanes. He built the first showroom – built exclusively for airplanes - in the United States, and marketed them to farmers and ranchers in Colorado.

Clinton Aviation later went on to represent Lear Jet Company, the Mitsubishi M2 and Aerostar Aircraft. The most significant hallmark of Clinton Aviation might be its prolific flight school, which ranked as one of the largest in the United States and served more than 300 students. Clinton taught many of those students personally, one of whom was Emily Howell Warner, who went on to become the first woman pilot hired for a scheduled airline in the United States.

One of Clinton’s proudest accomplishments is having teamed up, in 1968, with the Arapahoe Board of County Commissioners and George Wallace, founder of the Denver Tech Center, to open the Arapahoe County Airport, now known as Centennial Airport. Today, that airport consistently ranks as one of the five busiest general aviation airports in the country, and has remained an important driver of economic development in Arapahoe and Douglas counties.